It Takes One to Know One

Dear Reader, the very fact that you are reading this story on a haircutting fetish site may lead you to believe it is fantasy. It is not. This story is recorded here exactly as told to me by a close confidante, and is one hundred percent true. Only names and settings were changed when I set it down. How did this come about? Well, my close friend and I were sitting in a London pub one evening in the early Spring, three years ago, when I hinted at something that led him to enquire directly if I found womens’ haircutting sexually arousing. My confession and our subsequent discussions that evening were liberating to me, as well they might have been to someone who has hidden his fetish all his adult life! Most memorable of all was this story. My friend returned from the bar with two foaming pints of real ale, looked at me with a glint in his eye, took a sip of his drink, and said, ‘Let me tell you what happened to me only last month.’ Here is that story.

The rain was just holding off as I stepped outside, with the immediate prospect of a thin drizzle from a grey sky. Early January, one o’clock in the afternoon, and it was already getting dark. A dismal London day. Around London office workers everywhere are doing the same thing as they emerge to grab lunchtime sandwiches. Gina, a young woman in her early thirties, emerges from the front door buttoning her coat up, glances up at the lowering sky, grimaces, pulls her collar up and gives me a cheeky smile. “Oooooh, chill-eeh!! Where’re we going then – the usual?”

“The usual” is a sandwich shop just off Tottenham Court Road. We set off, take a left at the corner of the alleyway, but a couple of steps later Gina stops as if she’s forgotten something. She suggests a detour via Walcott Street. So of course that’s what we do.

Let me tell you about Gina. Intelligent, spirited and with a very lively sense of humour. And not one to suffer fools gladly. Oh no. I’d found that out to my cost. I liked her. Liked her a lot, and sometimes wondered if it wasn’t more than just a question of liking. I’m pretty sure she felt the same way too. We’d become pretty close colleagues since we started at the company the same summer five years previously. But I’d hesitate to say friends. We both had partners and so close friendship was somewhat awkward. Where does being a trusted colleague stop and being a friend start? I wish I knew the answer to questions like that. They plague the life of introverted sociopaths like me, but a cheerful extravert like Gina would never give them a moment’s thought. Gina’s thoughts are often externalised straight away, sometimes to comic effect. For instance, it’s typical of her to think aloud and make general announcements to her colleagues about her all sort of things, often her appearance and how she might best enhance it. One day it’s “I think I’m going to start wearing my contacts a lot more”. The next, an avowal to bring in her own sandwiches to save money. Then another day a lot of dissatisfied hair mussing and tossing, followed by bold prescriptions for a new hairstyle. I’d noticed the latter was something of an obsession with her. A recurring theme.

I’m not the conventional sexist male stereotype who classifies women on looks alone. But, it has to be said, on the physical appearance front Gina is not the traditional male fantasy. A bit of a tomboy, rather flat-chested and short of curves, but with a ramrod-straight bearing and endearingly feminine shoulders. A broad face with a longish irregular nose and small mouth. Her fine dark eyes are without a doubt her best feature. She’s taken to wearing contacts recently and they improve her looks no end. Oh, and her ears… I saw them for the first time ever today. Mostly they’re hidden under her unruly haystack of coarse and fairly abundant mousy-brown hair. If I was a cruel man I might describe it a similar to the style worn by Keanu Reeves in Wayne’s World, but really it defies all classification. This particular morning she’d been rocking back in her chair, arms above her head endlessly lifting this collar-length mop from her neck, then holding it back ponytail-style with one hand, then tucking it behind her ears, letting it flop back into place again, time and time again, all the while with her beady eyes on me, watching like a hawk for my reaction. During one of these manouevres her right ear was revealed, beautifully small and delicate. This surprise revelation rather threw out my calculated show of indifference to the display.

“Gosh, never seen your ears before Gina!”, I offered in a sort of sportingly jocular tone to hide my agitation, standing up and shuffling some papers on my desk with focussed attention in an effort to make the deliberately flirtatious comment appear offhand. I have a thing about ears. And hair, as you will by now have gathered, dear friend. I turned to glance at her and she blushed slightly and let the haystack collapse again.

“Thinking about cutting it off”, she said grimly and I could see her watch carefully for my reaction. She knows I’m one too, I thought. I didn’t reply, although a couple of seconds later a lame witticism to defuse the tension seemed like a good gambit.

“Ear or hair?”

“I think just the hair for now, I’m not van Gogh you know!” she replied with a laugh.

I find it very interesting just how many people, especially women, are obsessed with hair. Being a straight man, my obsession is a closely guarded secret. I’ve often wondered if my friends and colleagues knew my secret what they would think. I tend to think they would consider it unmanly, sinister, and deeply strange. In fact they’d probably just reckon it to be a slightly curious quirk. But I don’t intend to find out. I’d worked out long ago that Gina was either a closet or latent hair fetishist. Stuff like the constant hair displaying, baseless new haircut avowals, endless queries about what haircut would suit her, and only last week, on a particularly bad hair day for Gina, an angry oath to a mutual colleague, Frances, that she was “sick of trying to grow it out” and was going to go to her stylist and order her to “take it all off”. Both the colleague and I knew this outburst was just for effect and exchanged a secret look. You may recognise a theme quite similar to the famous short story set in the 1920s by F Scott Fitzgerald – Bernice Bobs her Hair – where an insecure young lady looking for attention and social approval is held by peer pressure to carry through her, in Fitzgerald’s words, “dishonourable tonsorial intentions”. In other words she tells her friends she’s going to have her long hair bobbed when she secretly has no intention of so doing. When her bluff is called by a scheming sexual rival, Bernice has no option but to suffer, in front of a party of her friends, a brutal public bobbing at the hands of a laconic male barber, and in a New York barber shop of all places. What riches I would give, dear friend, to see Gina undergoing the same treatment. A thrilling fantasy, but how little chance of it ever becoming real!

Actually the comparison is a little strained, as Bernice’s behaviour in the story is plain-vanilla attention-seeking rather than unconscious psychological obsession. The question remains for our real-life heroine, however. Gina: attention seeker or fetishist? One final example which I think nails it as the latter, again from one of our lunchtime strolls the previous summer, is her habit of peering into men’s barber shops with a comment such as “Ooh, that looks like a lovely little place”. The first time she did this I just replied with an affirmative grunt, the second time with a quizzical look, the third with a well-prepared enquiry delivered in as flat a tone as I could muster: “Why Gina, not thinking of getting a haircut in there are you?” She flushed as pink as a peeled prawn and said defensively “Well, I might, why not!?” followed by a shriek of hysterical laughter. Case proven?

But let’s get back to Walcott Street on a cold grey day in January. Exactly the same scenario is unfolding, as Gina has now pronounced a pressing need to at last ‘do something’ with her unruly mop and has homed in on an inconspicuous and plain-looking hair salon on a street corner. All it’s missing is the striped pole outside, for the plain wooden floor, general lack of adornment, and row of three large leather barber’s chairs with chrome trimmings and levers indicate quite clear stylistic allegiance to the old-fashioned gents barber’s, a somewhat unusual get-up for what is basically a ladies hairdresser’s. So, I muse, maybe for Gina a joint like this goes part of the way to fulfilling her fantasy about getting her hair cut in a gents barber’s? But it’s a safe fantasy as the place is actually a unisex salon with a female stylist.

Gina is clocking the joint with her beady eyes, trying to see through the window to the pleasures within. “Gosh,” she says slowly and appraisingly, “that looks like a lovely little place! Oh, my, look at these old-fashioned chairs! Oh aren’t they lovely? Do you know, I might go in there and get an appointment. I think Jane Fuller in Accounts has her hair cut there.”

I look as shocked as I am clearly intended to, although it is a put on. I’ve seen this coming. “Do you think that’s a recommendation?” I say rather bitchily, and with blimpish pomposity: “Anyway, it looks like a gents barbers! Don’t you normally have your hair cut in a ladies salon!?” Unfortunately there is no answer to this as Gina has stepped into the shop, and is exchanging words with the stylist. She emerges half a minute or so later with a business card. “Sorted then?”, I casually enquire. “No, might give it a whirl though”, she replies with a giggle and toss of the messy haystack. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you, Gina, you might come out with a short back and sides!” This slightly offbeat and provocative comment is brave coming from me (a timid soul until I am excited) and causes me to feel immense hidden arousal. I want to see the entirety of Gina’s untidy fleece clipped to a short man’s style and piled up unceremoniously into her lap while she looks on bravely but ruefully. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’m seeing a very clear vision indeed of Gina in one of those chairs, the command to “take it all off” already given, her neck taped, and slim, elegant shoulders caped snug and tight, with her chin on her chest and a pair of whining Wahl clippers held by some brute barber starting to shave upwards into her nape hair. But that’s fantasy, and we’re dealing with reality here. If past experience is anything to go by Gina’s predictions of mass hair removal are specious; and, the most I can expect is a barely noticeable trim. But one day…

The rest of the afternoon passes as grey office afternoons in January do. At quarter to five Gina gets up, switches off her workstation and packs for home. I just hear her quietly tell Frances that she’s going to get her hair cut. She must have made the appointment when I was away from my desk for twenty minutes for a very short meeting and I know exactly where she’s going. A plan I’ve been barely able to consciously contemplate owing to its strangeness and audacity has been hatching in my fevered brain during the afternoon. Exactly five minutes after Gina walks out I pack up and leave too.

I walk out into the black early evening in something of a daze, astonished that I’m about to commit an actual rather than fantasised act of voyeurism. And what’s more on someone known to me. I am very afraid that I will be discovered, and this adds to the excitement. Will I have the nerve? I turn down a very quiet side street that approaches a crossroads and notice a hidden vantage point diametrically opposite where I’m predicting the action will soon be unfolding. It’s a covered street-level car park with open sides, and is unlit. I walk in there and look over to the salon on the corner that Gina had visited on our lunchtime walk. It is lit up inside and looks like a scene from an Edward Hopper painting, the luminous interior throwing light on to the street. The figures inside are small from this distance but clearly identifiable as the young female stylist and Gina, who is sitting down chatting to her, presumably in some sort of preliminary consultation.

I’m in a trance, and experience a lurch of pure fear as Gina swivels round in her chair laughing and tossing her hair to make a comment. But there’s no way she could even see my shadowy figure from there, let along make out that figure was me. Five minutes must go past and still the consultation is going on. Would most women do this or is this yet more evidence of Gina’s obsession with her crowning glory and its coiffure? At one agonisingly delicious point the stylist gathers Gina’s mop of hair and pulls it up to reveal her nape. Moments later she indicates with a level palm the length of some putative bob. This gesture immediately excites me as the cut it suggests looks to be rather on the high and dramatic side. Will Gina be persuaded to have an ear-length bob with shaved nape?! I know the answer to that is no, but oh how I hope for the contrary and reflect longingly and fully on it for a half a minute or so that contains erotic eternity. My head tells me that if what Gina is really about here is a tidy-up during a growing-out campaign, then the only likely outcome is her requesting “a little off the length”, as having layers cut in during growing-out is counter-productive. By the same token, neither is she likely to require any clipper work, however I might desire to see it! After all, I’d already decided that the “take it all off” comment last week was a piece of provocative cant – slightly hysterical attention-seeking born out of genuine frustration with the slow growth and messiness of her unruly mop. How poor Gina must envy those women lucky enough to have thick glossy hair that grows like topsy! Over in the salon I now see Gina stand up to be caped by the stylist and seated in one of the chairs. More consultation ensues. How I wish I was a fly on the wall! I decide that I’ve been standing in the car park like the peeping Tom I have now become for several minutes too long, and should move. So I make a circuit of the block but when I approach from the opposite direction Gina and her tormentor have disappeared. It strikes me that her straight hair won’t be cut dry and that she is probably that very minute being shampooed. Half a minute later the caped Gina is indeed lead back to the hot seat by the stylist like a lamb to the slaughter and is seated in the left-most barber’s chair, the mid-brown haystack now sleek, dark, damp and straight down almost to shoulder length.

I drift into another erotic reverie, and find in my dream that Gina is indeed in a gents’ barbers, the sort with the striped barber’s pole and razor strops, and instead of the lady stylist it is an elderly gentleman barber who is leading her back to her seat and peering at her in puzzlement over the tops of his half-moon specs, pondering how to approach the unwonted task of giving this rather boyish lady the tidy-up haircut she has asked for. He pins up the hair at the back, combing down the nape section ready for cutting. He unhooks a pair of Wahl clippers, fits the No. 2 guard and as the clippers buzz loudly into life he forces her head down, chin firmly into chest…

But reality now kicks in as the lady stylist moves out of the way to give me a good three-quarter view of the back of Gina’s head. The action now starts, but despite my relative proximity, I’m unable to see the scissors actually doing their work in close-up and, worse, none of the dark damp commas of snipped-off hair (why is there no special word for these hair clippings?) are visible against the black cape. The next few minutes are a frustrating pas de deux between the stylist and Gina’s head, with me becoming increasingly frustrated by my inability either to see the action clearly or discern the actual removal of any hair. I am torn between the desire to get close up and see the cut in detail and the very real desire not to be caught spying. For a moment I physically shudder at the thought that Gina might discover what I have done. The fantasy is beginning to wear off and the realisation that I am standing like a pervert in a bitterly cold London street trying to snatch a glimpse of a woman’s haircut through a window is seeming increasingly ridiculous and pathetic. In any event, the haircut must by now be close to coming to an end, so I decide to leave. I pull my collar up high, dip my chin and walk quickly past the slightly steamy windows of the salon, getting the closest glimpse yet of Gina sitting erect in the chair. In the very rapid sideways glance I give, no hair is visible on the floor and only the slightest sprinkling of dark commas on the cape. Defeated I return home.

The next morning Gina is in before me. She isn’t her usual cheery self and barely acknowledges my presence. Her head bowed while she works at her desk, I can see that the style looks ever so slightly different – not really shorter just different with that fresh out of the salon look. A bit later our eyes meet. I look quizzical and say ‘Did you get a haircut then’? in an offhand way as if I hadn’t even bothered to look and see.

‘Did I get a haircut?’ she answers with an edge. ‘Well, yes.’’ I look up át her, study her hair for a fraction of a second and say, ‘Oh yeah it looks nice’. Gina just grimaces and shakes the haystack in irritation. ‘She hasn’t taken enough off ,’ she says , ‘what do you think?’

I look and think for a second before answering.

‘I don’t think really short would suit you Gina. If I were you I would grow it longer’..’